Einstein@Home Set To Break Petaflops Barrier 96
hazeii writes "Einstein@home, the distributed computing project searching for the gravitational waves predicted to exist by Albert Einstein, looks set to breach the 1 Petaflops barrier around midnight UTC tonight. Put into context, if it was in the Top500 Supercomputers list, it would be in at number 24. I'm sure there are plenty of Slashdot readers who can contribute enough CPU and GPU cycles to push them well over 1,000 teraflops — and maybe even discover a pulsar in the process."
From their forums: "At 14:45 we had 989.2 TFLOPS with an increase of 1.3 TFLOPS/h. In principle that's enough to reach 1001.1 TFLOPS at midnight (UTC) but very often, like yesterday, between 22:45 and 22:50 there occurs a drop of about 5 TFLOPS. So we will have very likely hit 1 PFLOPS in the early morning tomorrow. "
E@H success (Score:1, Informative)
Although Seti@Home is probably the most known project (or used to be), E@H is probably the most successful one from the pure science perspectives. They have actually managed to discover new pulsars that nobody has seen before, and unlike some slightly shady DC projects (some of them being actually for-profit), their data is accessible. Good job E@H team!
Re:10001.1 TFLOPS, eh? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think the poster is a native speaker and I fixed a bunch of other obvious typos... but missed that extra zero there.
Re:Yeah no thanks (Score:2, Informative)
You're not actually producing bitcoin, you're just competing to win them. That is: nothing new is created by your participation in the bitcoin network, the best you can hope for is that you'll receive something which otherwise would've gone to someone else. It helps you personally, but is 0 sum for the world.
With einstein@home and folding@home, you are helping to solve big science problems. These problems will be solved faster with your help than without it. It is a net gain for science and humanity.
Re:Any suggestions for a distributed client? (Score:2, Informative)
I think Folding@home uses its own specialized client. I've never used it, so I can't help you there. Most of the other distributed (grid) projects out there use the BOINC [berkeley.edu] client. BOINC allows you to schedule processor time to when you want to run, allows the stoppage of distributed processes once CPU usage reaches a certain (user-definable) level, and all sorts of other things. I don't think Folding@home allows the BOINC client to connect, however.
I think what is happening (in your case) is the folding client is taking what you said quite literally, and treating the hyper-threaded cores as real cores. It filled up your 4 physical cores, causing your system to show 100% CPU usage while not utilizing your hyper-threaded cores. I think your OS and folding client are performing exactly as intended. If you truly want only two cores (plus their hyper-threaded cores) to fire, you'll either have to manually set your affinity on the folding tasks or simply tell the folding client to only use two cores.
You can try raising the issue in the help forums on Folding@home and see if they have a better solution.
Re:folding@home (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure people realize that SETI has basically already failed. They've covered their entire spectrum numerous times
The entire spectrum? We've only looked at one frequency range on 20% of the sky:
SETI@home is basically a 21-cm survey. If we haven't guessed right about the alien broadcasters' choice of hailing frequency, the project is barking up the wrong tree in a forest of thousands of trees. Secondly, there has been little real-time followup of interesting signals. Lack of immediate, dedicated followup means that many scans are needed of each sky position in order to deal with the problem of interstellar scintillation if nothing else.
With its first, single-feed receiver, SETI@home logged at least three scans of more than 67 percent of the sky observable from Arecibo, amounting to about 20 percent of the entire celestial sphere. Of this area, a large portion was swept six or more times. Werthimer says that a reasonable goal, given issues such as interstellar scintillation, is nine sweeps of most points on Arecibo's visible sky.
Quoted from http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/seti/3304561.html?page=5&c=y [skyandtelescope.com]
Also, when there is no work to be done, your computer can look at other things.
I donate my time to several medical studies that will likely find some results that will help all people. I also donate some time to climate research that has less of a chance of helping EVERYONE. I also donate some time to SETI which has a very, very small chance of changing the world.
It is called hedging your bets. I spend some CPU on things with low risk and low reward, and others on things with high risk and high reward.